"Look at all these sunny balls!" - WDW/Uni TR Feb 17-26th 2018 (6/18 Wrap-up and DVC review)

[skier_pete]

Its been nearly a month since I commented. It's been crazy for me lately between out of town guests every other weekend (not all at my house, but at Disney). Between work and daily life I've fallen way behind on any TR that has more than bi weekly updates!

I'm not sure if youve been reading up on my TR but plans have changed for this summer's trip. It turns out we will be going home directly from our cruise, so our trips will not overlap anymore.

I agree with your assesment of Disney vs Universal. There is so much more to Disney than just the rides. Sometimes I don't ride anything when we go out to Anaheim.

Sorry you had to deal with hangry females. No meat and dairy is a tough one! You pretty much need someplace vegan.

Funny how you missed the change in Rope Drop times. I'm always checking the app mainly because I don't trust my own memory for opening times and such.

I saw your plea for comments, and sorry it took me a while to get back here, but in about six months I'll propbably get to what I've been up to in the bonus features on my own TR! Currently I'm still on December!

Hey Allison - I do admit I missed that in your TR. I do stop by every once in a while with your updates. (The last one I saw I think you were posting about Halloween because I remember Mater with his vampire "costume".) That is too bad - I had told DW that we had to meet for Jellyrolls with you and maybe Fran, so I guess that is out.

Hangry can happen at Disney. And yes, without sitting down at Flying Fish getting a non meat/dairy item leaves you with friend dough and popcorn.

I appreciate the comments - but you are one of the folks that always comments, and I DO appreciate it!

 

[franandaj]

Hey Allison - I do admit I missed that in your TR. I do stop by every once in a while with your updates. (The last one I saw I think you were posting about Halloween because I remember Mater with his vampire "costume".)

Then you haven't seen that update. I posted it about two weeks ago and it was for the Festival of Holidays, so the one after the Halloween post. Pretty soon I'll be posting about our December weekend that we spent there, after I get caught up on a few more TRs.

I appreciate the comments - but you are one of the folks that always comments, and I DO appreciate it!

Thanks! I do comment when I can, but if you read my most recent update you'd know why I've been so busy this last month!

 

[skier_pete]

Then you haven't seen that update. I posted it about two weeks ago and it was for the Festival of Holidays, so the one after the Halloween post. Pretty soon I'll be posting about our December weekend that we spent there, after I get caught up on a few more TRs.

OK - I caught up and replied on YOUR thread. But sorry to see we aren't going to be able to meet up in WDW.

 

[skier_pete]

Day 5 - Continued

We headed back to the resort and took a short break in the room before we headed into Epcot – we had a 1:30 PM reservation for Chefs De France. We were originally going to go for dinner, but realized that Tables in Wonderland only discounts lunch, so we figured we would eat earlier.

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My biggest complaint about CdF is that they really have the tables crammed into this restaurant, which cuts down on the dining experience, but they had us in the front of the building but also as far from the entrance as you could get and it really wasn’t as bad as other experiences here have been.

What we ended up doing is I ordered the Pris Frix menu, which gave a meal plus salad and dessert. DW and DD ordered off the menu and only got the sald/soup course and the meal, so we just split a dessert. (A common theme on this trip.) DW and I got a salad. This was a wonderful salad with fresh greens and a really delicious vinaigrette.

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DD had the French Onion Soup, though she actually doesn’t like the “cheese glob” on top.

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She let me have a taste and I admit it was pretty great. She also got the Macaroni and Cheese, which uses a gruyere and I was a little worried she wouldn’t like it, but she did eat about half of it. I was quite tasty.

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DW got the Steak frites, beurre maitre d'hôtel which is a Grilled flat iron steak, French fries, lemon and parsley butter. We also got a glass of wine each, but don’t ask me to tell you the wine. They were both very good though.

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I ordered the Boeuf Bourguignon, linguine - Beef braised in Cabernet with baby onions and carrots, served with linguine pasta. This was both a rather large portion of food but also very delicious.

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We had no complaints at all about our meal, and as we had decided, just enough room to share a single dessert. We berries with 3 flavor sorbet. Just as good as the rest of the meal.

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We had a couple of Fastpasses set up for the afternoon, so we headed into future world next. The Arts Festival had just ended, and Flower and Garden had not yet started up, but they were putting all the flowers and topiaries out all week. The theme seems to be butterflies.

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First FP+ up was for Soarin’

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These dang balloons have been hanging up there for 35 years!

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We have learned with the new Soarin’ movie that we always ask to sit in the center section. We find even if it means waiting extra it’s worth the trouble as a few scenes seem very distorted when viewed from the side. (I don’t think the old movie had this problem.)

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We timed our FPs so that by the time we got off of Soarin’ it was already time to get on the 2nd one, Living with the Land. I didn’t take any pictures of this though. It was at this point I started communicating with our friends to try and meet up with them. They were in the park, but they were coming back to future world after eating at Biergarten. We were trying to get them into the DVC lounge.

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So we shopped a little bit at Mousegears, picking up some souvenirs, including I wanted a “Thank the Phoenicians” hat, but eventually went to our third FP at Spaceship Earth!

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Thank you Phoenicians!
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Once we were done we texted our friends again. They were in line for SSE, so we headed over to the lounge knowing they were unlikely to join us. The DVC lounge is a nice perk, but we always seem to arrive just as they are closing for the day.

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DD still loving being on her phone!

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So I know this was about 6 PM, and so we headed back to the Boardwalk done with our day. Again, not a lot of rides, but we went almost straight through from 9 AM to 6 PM with only a short break today, so we thought calling it a day would be nice.

I can’t remember now if we took the boat back or we walked – I think it was the boat, though. When we got back I told DD and DW to go up to the room first so I could get some pictures on the balcony. Who knows when we will get such a great room location again.

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The diner’s below us at Big River Grille.

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No one was too hungry for dinner, so we went out to the Boardwalk to pick up some food. DD wanted funnel cake, while I wanted to try Ample Hills. (No pictures, but Ample Hills’ ice cream is AMAZING) while DW got a sandwich from the Boardwalk Bakery. While it would be nice to have a central dining location here, it actually wasn’t sooo bad to be able to eat this way.

This was also our last night at BWV (already?) and so we couldn’t resist one more visit to our friendly neighborhood piano bar.

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Up next - on the move!

 

[franandaj]

I love CdF! We always end up with way too much food and end up taking it back to the room. I love the onion soup and the Mac n Cheese.

It sounded like you had a very full day evenif you didn't get a lot of rides in.

 

[rteetz]

Nice meal at Chefs de France! I really enjoyed it when I was there a couple years ago.

 

[PolyRob]

MMM your Chefs de France meal looks delicious! I haven't been in maybe 2 years. I think I will need to return on my next trip!

 

[skier_pete]

I love CdF! We always end up with way too much food and end up taking it back to the room. I love the onion soup and the Mac n Cheese.

It sounded like you had a very full day evenif you didn't get a lot of rides in.

It's been too long since we've been. It was a really great meal, too! We did a good job of not going too far overboard. It helps that it was a long time since breakfast!

Nice meal at Chefs de France! I really enjoyed it when I was there a couple years ago.

It was a great meal. Great wait-staff too!

MMM your Chefs de France meal looks delicious! I haven't been in maybe 2 years. I think I will need to return on my next trip!

I think it's a can't-go-wrong stop.

 

[tammy]

Nice review of Chefs de France...one of my favorites. Beautiful pictures as usual.

 

[Aurora1972]

Chefs de France looks delicious. I had initially planned to eat there during our trip in June but DH really wanted Biergarten. I let him win on one ADR. I'm following along. I'm usually a Dis'er who just reads and rarely posts. I've been trying to be a little better lately about saying hello and commenting because I know that helps all your TR writers feel more motivated to continue posting.

 

[skier_pete]

Nice review of Chefs de France...one of my favorites. Beautiful pictures as usual.

Thank you!

Chefs de France looks delicious. I had initially planned to eat there during our trip in June but DH really wanted Biergarten. I let him win on one ADR. I'm following along. I'm usually a Dis'er who just reads and rarely posts. I've been trying to be a little better lately about saying hello and commenting because I know that helps all your TR writers feel more motivated to continue posting.

It is true it can be tough when you spend hours working a TR and get 2 replies. I also watch roughly the number of views I get and it seems to be somewhere between 500 and 1000 per post, so I know people out there are reading. (Either that or a lot of accidental clicks: "Ugh, THIS guy again!")

Biergarten is a lot of fun. My biggest problem is that I feel it is overpriced for the quality of food that you get, but that's not factoring in the entertainment factor. It's definitely a good choice though!

 

[YodasMom]

I always enjoy your trip reports, and this one is no exception!!! I just returned last week from 8 days at WDW and am still getting caught up.

As I've mentioned, I love BWV!!! Half my points are there and the other half are at AKV, all small contracts, though. I usually use all my DVC points for my visit during Food & Wine Festival. I've never had a problem waitlisting / transfer of my AKV points to BWV to add to my BWV points until last October. I was able to get 6 days of my stay at BWV and 3 days at BCV then, though. I'm going through the same thing this year for this coming October with 5 nights at BWV but 3 of my nights are still at AKV. Stalking the DVC website daily as well! If my 2 BWV waitlists don't come through, I'll just keep the AKV reservation since that part of the stay is on the weekend and I love it there anyway. I try to stay away from Epcot on the weekends during the festivals. Sure wish I had more points but then my annual dues would be higher, too. Oh well, first world problems! I'm lucky to have what I do!

Looks like you had a great location with your most recent trip at BWV!

Sometime when you have time and when you're back at BWV, you might enjoy doing the Ballyhoo Tour of the resort. It's interesting, though I don't know if your DD would enjoy it, or not.

Looking forward to more of your report!!!

 

[DLo]

Going to Chefs next week and seriously considering the steak and frites. Looks great in your pics and the dessert looks wow !

 

[skier_pete]

Going to Chefs next week and seriously considering the steak and frites. Looks great in your pics and the dessert looks wow !

The steak was really good! And the dessert was great. I find as I get older and can't eat as much, I like a light dessert. The dessert was light but the portion was big enough that we could split 3 ways and no-one felt slighted.

 

[SweetSerenity]

I'm all caught up!

I haven't been to Universal since I was around 11. ET was always my favorite ride. When I was a kid, ET said "Come back, Shannon" to me. Too bad you all didn't get to ride it! I've wanted to go back ever since they opened up all the Harry Potter stuff, but my husband says I get the choice of Disney or Harry Potter, not both. He's very anti "split stay." I've enjoyed seeing all your pictures. Maybe some day I will make it there. I do hate the trouble you went through with all the passes. Disney customer service does spoil us with the expectations that other companies will respond the same way.

Your meal at Chefs de France looks wonderful. We contemplated adding it to our trip this coming November, but we had a bad experience there a few years ago. I don't know, though, it may be worth another shot.

 

[skier_pete]

I'm all caught up!

I haven't been to Universal since I was around 11. ET was always my favorite ride. When I was a kid, ET said "Come back, Shannon" to me. Too bad you all didn't get to ride it! I've wanted to go back ever since they opened up all the Harry Potter stuff, but my husband says I get the choice of Disney or Harry Potter, not both. He's very anti "split stay." I've enjoyed seeing all your pictures. Maybe some day I will make it there. I do hate the trouble you went through with all the passes. Disney customer service does spoil us with the expectations that other companies will respond the same way.

Your meal at Chefs de France looks wonderful. We contemplated adding it to our trip this coming November, but we had a bad experience there a few years ago. I don't know, though, it may be worth another shot.

I get where your husband is coming from. The tickets for each resort individually are really expensive. To do them both in a single trip is incredibly costly. We only did it because the upgrade to AP was pretty cheap, so doing this combined trip didn't really cost all that much more than a regular Disney trip. (And our Disney passes are split across four trips also, so there's that savings as well.)

While we didn't LOVE Universal, we did like it a lot, and the Harry Potter stuff is amazing! I would definitely suggest breaking down one time and doing a Universal trip. Though at this point I would wait for the new coaster (rumored to be a Hagrid's Motorcycle coaster) which I think will be open sometime next year.

Also, it's understanding if a bad experience turns you off to a place, and there are certainly plenty of other places to choose from instead of Chefs De France.

 

[khertz]

Gotta admit, I've never even considered eating at Chefs de France, but everything y'all had looks really delicious!

I totally feel you on Soarin'. It's really a shame they haven't come up with a way for everyone in the theater to have the same experience. There's no reason people on the sides should have to see the Eiffel Tower melting!

 

[Cowgirl_Jessie]

Love the part of your story where you wished that one day you could stay at BWV and now you have a DVC contract there!! What a great story of dreams coming true! Thanks for sharing!!!

Also, I think we can all appreciate your transparency about the hangry incident. It happens to us all and can sneak up in a hurry! For first timers, I always try to encourage them to make sure to get lots of snacks and drinks. The heat and walking can be formidable; blood sugar management goes along way! Words that I thought I would never utter but have at the Parks to DS, "you know, you look like you need MORE ice cream or maybe some cotton candy! We have dinner in an hour, but no matter!" So appreciate your trip report; it has been fun to virtually revisit the parks!

 

[skier_pete]

Gotta admit, I've never even considered eating at Chefs de France, but everything y'all had looks really delicious!

I totally feel you on Soarin'. It's really a shame they haven't come up with a way for everyone in the theater to have the same experience. There's no reason people on the sides should have to see the Eiffel Tower melting!

Oh, I think Chefs De France is one of the great places in World Showcase, but I am a huge fan of French food in general. (Except Frogs legs!)

Yeah, I mostly like the new Soarin' movie but the distracting CGI and then a few scenes that bend off to the side drive me nuts.

Love the part of your story where you wished that one day you could stay at BWV and now you have a DVC contract there!! What a great story of dreams coming true! Thanks for sharing!!!

Also, I think we can all appreciate your transparency about the hangry incident. It happens to us all and can sneak up in a hurry! For first timers, I always try to encourage them to make sure to get lots of snacks and drinks. The heat and walking can be formidable; blood sugar management goes along way! Words that I thought I would never utter but have at the Parks to DS, "you know, you look like you need MORE ice cream or maybe some cotton candy! We have dinner in an hour, but no matter!" So appreciate your trip report; it has been fun to virtually revisit the parks!

Thanks for joining in. I use this example with our daughter who is in her cynical teen years and says "Disney says dreams come true, that's not true!" and I say, "Not all dreams, but some dreams can come true if you work for them." Then she says "But Disney says you just have to wish hard enough." and then I go "You got me there!"

My wife probably wouldn't appreciate me sharing, but prefer to keep it real - not every minute at Disney comes out perfect. Another thing we did wrong there is not come up with a plan. Planning at Disney is really important to prevent aimless wandering and frustration. Well actually we did have a plan but when we got to Les Halles, everything had CHEESE and MEAT!"

 

[skier_pete]

Day 6 – On the Move

Another late night but we didn’t sleep in that long. Our too-short stay at Boardwalk was already at an end. Compared to the way we moved every night for the first 3 nights, having 3 nights in one place was wonderful. However, we still had 4 nights to go and we needed to pack up and move our stuff. It took us probably until about 10:30 AM before we were all packed and had our bags picked up. We were moving to Wilderness Lodge, so our day plan was to go and do a few more things in Epcot, and then head out to either MK or directly to WLV.

So we took the boat over to Epcot. I wanted to get a couple of pictures of the new gondola/skyway station work, but there wasn’t really much to see. The posters showed some details though.

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That last one does a nice job of laying out the route. Will make it a lot more fun to stay at CBR and Pop Century, that’s for sure. (Also likely will make it more expensive!)
The other interesting thing going on is that evening though the Arts Festival only ended 3 days before, it’s time to start getting ready for Flower and Garden! Here’s some of the topiaries we came across.

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Had to get another shot of DD on her phone!

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Our first FP+ of the day we were too late for, but the 2nd one was up as we made our way to Test Track. I admit I botched this one up too. We were sent into the room at the end, and we each had a chance to make our own car, but when we scanned our car at the ride, I waited too long, and it ended up not registering! Dangit.

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Once we rode TT – DW wanted to get some Dramamine before our second ride, while DD wanted a pretzel, so DD and I sat near the pretzel stand and I ended up talking to the two CM at the DVC booth. It was an interesting conversation – being DVC owners we can chat from experience, but we always leave out the fact that we didn’t buy direct. These CM didn’t seem to be super informed, when I mentioned that prices for buying at resorts like the Poly had just gone up a LOT, the one lady said “Oh, you can only buy at the resorts that are on sale – Copper Creek and Aulani”, which is not strictly true. That’s where Disney WANTS you to buy, but you can buy any of the other resorts as well.

After that we ended up doing the green side of Mission Space. This was DDs first time on the new “Mission: Earth”. Gotta say it’s sort of boring. But we are all afraid to try what we call the “spinny side” since we are all prone to motion sickness.

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It was time to get some lunch, so we headed over to Sunshine Seasons – one of our favorite QS locations. DD and I both got the pork chop. This is a favorite of mine, but she couldn’t even remotely finish hers.

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DW got the Mongolian beef stir fry, which is also very good.

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WE saved room for dessert. DW really loved the gold rose cupcake (with a cinnamon flavor) and DD loves a good dark chocolate cake.

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It was now probably around 2 PM or so and still no word on our room being ready. We debated about heading to MK, but that big sunny ball in the sky was beating down pretty hard – so we instead decided to just head for the resort and hope our room would be ready before too long. We went to the WL bus stop, which also stopped at Fort Wilderness. We got there and there was only one other family there – we knew we were probably in for a wait. Wasn’t too bad though – I think only about 20 minutes and the bus arrived. Only our third bus ride of the trip!

The bus dropped off not far from the DVC wing, but we still didn’t have a signal that our room was ready, so we went into the lobby.

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DDs not the only one stuck on her phone:

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DD and DW plopped down in the lobby while I headed up to the front desk to see how long until our room would be ready. It turned out it wasn’t going to be very long. At the same time, I worked with the desk to make sure we weren’t going to get screwed on our last day of our trip. We had booked three nights by borrowing/buying points from another friend who owns DVC. (Thanks – you-know-who!) We then ended up adding a fourth night using our own points. The result is we had two separate reservations in the same name, but booked by two different people. Our experience is that Disney often screws up this type of thing. After first being assured that it wouldn’t have screw things up, we still spent 15 minutes making sure the two reservations in the system showed a continuous reservation. I may not mention it when we get there – but in the end there were no problems with the extra night, but I am well convinced my discussions here ensured that. By the time this was all done, the room was ready.

(I am a strong believer in being very friendly and kind to service workers, but particularly at Disney. I have found that when you are a well-knowledgable and understanding customer, they bend over backwards to show you fantastic service. It’s my theory that they probably spend 50% of their time dealing with customer complaints, and about 49% of that time dealing with people being massive jerks about those complaints. As such, we have almost never had an issue with customer service at WDW and near 100% great cast member experiences. I’ll talk about some more great CM experiences in a bit.

I moved over to talk to bell services about our bags. They hadn’t arrived yet at this time – about 3PM and so we moved off to our room.

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One of the great cons of DVC – though I DO enjoy it - is that as a member you are coming “home” when you arrive at your room. It’s pretty effective really. (The second great con is right in the name – that you are not a timeshare owner, you are member of an exclusive “club”. Again, pretty effective though!)

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The room layout is not much different from all other DVC rooms. I didn’t enjoy the décor here as much as Boardwalk. It wasn’t just that Boardwalk was recently refreshed, it was just that this was dark and sort of blah.

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Love the kitchenettes in the DVC rooms. I can handle the lesser living space for this extra convenience.

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Our location was pretty great. We were on the end of the DVC – Boulder Ridge Villas nearest the main lodge, and our view was pointed at the new Quiet Pool and beyond that out to Bay Lake. Only the second floor, but overall pretty good view for a DVC unit.

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This section of the lodge here is where the Copper Creek Villas DVC section has been built. Wilderness Lodge is the only resort that has TWO independent DVCs incorporated within it.

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The new Geyser Point lounge.

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I’m glad I have a picture of this from the first day of our stay. Later in our stay – a baby Bison showed up and I thought I was crazy that I didn’t see it before.

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Continued in Next Post...